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The Settlement of Germantown 1683-1719 and the beginning of Germantown Meeting Randal L Whitman 2020

Germantown got its name because the first settlers were Quakers from Germany—even though they were ethnically and linguistically Dutch, and all converted Mennonites. It all makes a good story, but I will start it with the Mennonites, a century before George Fox and his ideas.

Gathering settlers Menno Simons (1492-1561) was a Dutch Catholic priest who, in the middle of the 16th century, first articulated the views that became the fundamental basis of Mennonism. The “worst” part of these, among many heresies--as far as Catholicism was concerned, and Lutheranism, too, in its turn--was the rejection of infant baptism in favor of adult baptism1. Menno attracted many Dutch followers who were severely persecuted, even in Holland, where “there were put to death for this cause at Rotterdam seven persons, Haarlem ten, the Hague thirteen, Curtrijk twenty, Brugge twenty-three, Amsterdam twenty-six…” 2. Holland would develop in the next century into the most liberal and tolerant nation in Europe, but rather too late for the Mennonites. Many Dutch Mennonites fled in the 16th century, mostly into other Teutonic areas of northern Europe, especially up the Rhine River, to a region called the Palatinate. One such group came to Crefeld, and settled there, a Mennonite community. Crefeld was a town on the Rhine, about half-way from Amsterdam to Frankfort, in the Duchy of Cleves, a state of the Holy Roman Empire, which was officially Catholic. After 1614, following political developments, Cleves, with Crefeld, became a part of the Margravate of Brandenburg, a part of Prussia, also a state of the Holy Roman Empire. After a while, the Mennonites were noticed, and repression began anew. The Mennonites were receptive in the 1670s to touring and proselytizing Friends, including George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Penn and others, newly spreading the Quaker Word. Many Mennonites converted. In particular, a Quaker meeting was formed in 1679 in Crefeld, part of Amsterdam Yearly Meeting and made up of 100% former Dutch Mennonites. But Lutheran Prussia3 soon became about as unsympathetic to Friends as they were to Mennonites, and subsequently both Mennonite and Friends communities were persecuted, including the new Quakers of Crefeld. In 1682, William Penn acquired the Proprietorship of Pennsylvania from the English crown in settlement of debts the crown owed his father. Penn resolved to create a colony run by Friends and devoted to religious freedom there.4 Aware of the persecutions, and eager to promote settlement of Pennsylvania, he wrote letters and tracts to those he had encountered on his travels, urging resettlement of these oppressed communities. He found ready ears in both Crefeld’s Quakers and among the German Pietists of Frankfort, a Lutheran sect that believed in infant baptism, but otherwise had many views rather like both Mennonites and Friends. Two important

1 Mennonism was a mostly Dutch sect of the anabaptist strand of the Protestant Reformation. 2 Quoted in Samuel Pennypacker, The Settlement of Germantown, William J Campbell, Philadelphia 1899. Page 10. 3 Although the Holy Roman Empire was Catholic, at this time it tolerated a state’s adherence to Lutheranism if the state preferred. 4 See An Holy Experiment, the fourth essay in this series, for a fuller story of Penn’s venture. 2 differences, however, were that the Pietists tended to be relatively wealthy, and even better, they were not under persecution. Francis Daniel Pastorius, usually called Daniel, was a wealthy young and idealistic Lutheran German from Frankfort. He trained in the law and in languages, and at the age of 29 took a two-year tour of Europe to apprise himself of the region’s moral tone. He returned to Frankfort in November of 1682, discouraged and disenchanted. There he found congenial support from the Pietists. They told him of their plans to go to Penn’s New World to live an ordered and moral life. Pastorius became enthusiastic about this endeavor and decided to go himself. More importantly, he became the Pietists’ agent, intending to prepare the way for them. Later, in 1686 the Pietists formed the Frankfort Company, with Pastorius again their legal agent in Pennsylvania, to manage their land-holdings there. The Frankfort Company did more than buy and sell land; it also arranged, in exchange for indentured service, to cover the costs of transportation from Germany to Philadelphia for those who could not themselves afford the trip, the contract stipulating that on arrival the immigrants shall “report themselves to Francis Daniel Pastorius.” Now, in March of 1683, Pastorius set off down the Rhine River to go to England to find Penn and buy land for the Pietists. Along the way he came to Crefeld, where he recruited the community of Friends to this venture. They were more than ready! Some Crefelders, such as Jacob Telner and Jan Streypers, had already bought land from Penn, but no specific plans for resettlement had yet been made. In the end, resettlement of Crefeld’s Quakers would be almost complete. While thirteen families made the trip in 1683, by 1685 all but one family of the Quakers in Crefeld had picked up and gone to Germantown. This and the subsequent removal to Germantown of not-too-distant Cresheim’s Quakers, also mostly former Dutch Mennonites, in the next few years suggests the degree of misery that religious persecution had brought them. Suppression had been intense, and Pastorius must have been compelling. Perhaps it was simply the fact that while the Quaker proselytizers all spoke English, Pastorius spoke to the Crefelders in Dutch, one of his eight languages). But mostly it was probably the transparent fact that he was, even as he spoke, On His Way to the New World, and promised he would be there to help them. Crefeld Friends said they would follow him--and did, about six weeks later. Pastorius continued to London where he found that Penn had already gone to Philadelphia aboard the Welcome the previous summer. Still, he was able to buy 15,000 acres, later increased to 25,000 acres, from Penn’s London agent. And then he took ship aboard the America. Among those aboard ship was Thomas Lloyd, an aristocratic Welsh Friend on his way to Philadelphia to help Penn run his new colony. Lloyd and Pastorius became good friends, having many long conversations in Latin--Pastorius’ proficiency in English not yet comfortably achieved. The America arrived in Philadelphia late in August 1683. There he quickly found Penn and told him, to Penn’s delight, of the coming Germans. Pastorius immediately built himself a “cave,” a crude shelter best thought of as a covered hole-in-the-ground, in Philadelphia (see Fig. 1). His cave was located on what is now 502 South Front Street, facing the river. On the lintel above his door, Pastorius wrote the motto, Parva domus sed amica Bonis procul este Prophani (My home is small but friendly to the Good, the Profane stay without). Penn, when he read it, laughed aloud. The Crefelders followed on the ship Comfort, arriving on October 6, 1683 after a relatively peaceful journey. There were 42 of them, in 13 families that debarked in Philadelphia. Because time was short before winter came, Penn hastened the process and on October 24 Penn’s Surveyor-General Thomas Fairman surveyed fourteen lots, seven on either side of a trail that 3 would become “Main Street,” and ultimately Germantown Avenue. The following morning the Crefeld settlers crowded into Pastorius’ cave to draw lots. Having drawn, they trekked two hours, about six miles, out to their new homesites, which consisted of a thick woodland through which ran a rough Indian trail. This trail ran along a ridge that separated two watersheds, the Wissahickon and Wingohocking Creeks, both of which would be very important in the future of the community5. The settlers began digging out their caves.

Fig. 1 Image of a cave from Keyser, History of Old Germantown, pg 31

The lots were numbered 1 (closest to Philadelphia) through 7, to the east and to the west along the track and were mostly about 50 acres in size. Each lot was seen as coming in two parts: the main part was the long and narrow 25 acres adjacent to the future “Main Street”, supplemented by another 25 acres elsewhere. Some lots made up this second amount in land below the first lots (“side lots”). In this paper and on the map (Fig. 2), I am varying from the “official” direction descriptors originally used: my lot “#1 East” was called “Lot No. 1 toward Bristol” and “#1 West” was “Lot No. 1 toward Schuylkill.” In the list of names following below (and in the rest of this account), every name was spelled in a variety of ways in the documents where they were found; there’s no telling which spelling was “right.” Furthermore, Dutch naming custom made a father’s first name the middle name of each of his children. Thus, the three Op den Graeff brothers--their sister, too--all shared a middle name, Isaacs, since their father was named Isaac: thus, Dirck Isaacs op den Graeff, Herman Isaacs op den Graeff, and so on. A considerable source of confusion arises because the Dutch additionally recognized as complete names just the first and middle name. Thus, Herman Isaacs Op den Graeff could formally be called, or call himself Herman Isaacs just as rightly as Herman Op den Graeff. As an example of this, it took me a while to understand that Abraham Tunes, on lot #7 West was actually the brother of a later-arriving settler Aret Klincken, of lot #20 West; their father had been named Tunes Klincken. I have chosen for each person—more or less arbitrarily--one name and one spelling.

5Readers familiar with the area may legitimately ask “Wingohocking Creek? Where is it?” Despite being big enough and fast enough to support a number of mills critical to Germantown’s history, it suffered the fate of many urban watercourses: in the late nineteenth century most of the creek was turned into piped storm run-off channels and buried, then built over. Consult ttfwatershed.org for a map and more information. 4

Fig 2. Germantown, circa 1705. (Note: Benson’s La should be Bensell’s La.) 5

#1 East: Peter Kurlis, his wife Elizabeth Doors, and two children; #1 West: Willem Streypers, his wife Belcken Tuffers, and five children; #2 East: Thones Kunders, his wife Elin Doors, and three children; #2 West: Dirck op den Graeff, his wife Nilcken Vijten6; perhaps his mother Margarethe; #3 East: Jan Lensen, and his wife Mercken Peters; they probably remained Mennonite; #3 West: A double lot for Dirck’s younger brothers: Abraham op den Graeff, his wife Catherina Jansen, and two children; Herman op den Graeff, his wife Liesbet van Bebber, and perhaps his sister Margaret; #4 East: Lenart Arets and his wife Agnes Doors; #4 West: Jan Seimens, his wife Mercken Lucken, and one child; #5 East: Reynier Tyson; #5 West: Reserved for the Pietists and a public square acre; #6 East: Jan Lucken, and his wife Mary Tyson, who married just days before leaving; #6 West: Johannes Bleikers, his wife Rebecca and two children; #7 East: Abraham Tunes, and his wife Beatrix Lucken; #7 West: Reserved for the Pietists

The settlers were more than a community, they were an extended family, with almost every individual related to every other. In the above settler list, if you see names (Lucken, Tyson, Doors, etc.) that are the same, you may assume they are closely related. One could argue that Matthias Tyson Doors of Crefeld, who died before all this started, might be considered the “father of Germantown” in so far as he is the father of 12 known survivors to adulthood, of whom 10-- maybe 11-- emigrated to Germantown in 1683-84, and he was the uncle of 4 more. They most likely ganged together to clear enough trees to make space for twelve caves, one for each family. No cave was dug for Abraham and Beatrix Tunes, as she was very ill; the Tunes spent the winter in Philadelphia as Pastorius’ guests and began their residency the following year. One settler, Willem Streypers, occupied a cave on a lot not owned by himself, but by his brother. Jan Streypers, one of the richer members of Crefeld bought quite a lot of land, sent his brother to homestead his lot, and cut deals with several others of the settlers, whose way he paid. He may have intended to join them eventually, and a little later did visit for a period, but elected in the end to remain in Europe. After the death of their father, Jan and Willem agreed that Jan would keep all European land, and Willem all American. The one unmarried lot-holder, Reynier Tyson, married in 1684 Margaret op den Graeff7, the younger sister of Dirck, Abraham and Herman, who had come on the Comfort with them. The pattern of marrying within the community would dominate through this and the following generation.

The early years

6 Dirck and Nilcken married in Crefeld in 1681 in full Friendly manner; their marriage certificate is the only known continental Quaker marriage certificate of the time. 7 This is weakly documented, but Tyson’s alternative possible wives (Margaret Streypers and Margaret Kunders) have little credible support (that is, there is little reason to believe women of these names existed in Germantown at the time). Tyson family genealogy says that Reynier married his first cousin after the meeting gave its approval, and Margaret op den Graeff was indeed his first cousin. 6

In November, the first settler died: Margarethe op den Graeff, the mother of the three brothers, and the oldest member of the new community. That winter, Jan Seimens died. His wife, Mercken, who had a newborn son named Peter Simons, the first child born in Germantown, married Willem Streypers in 1685, whose wife Belcken had died earlier that year. That first winter of 1683-84 was devoted to clearing trees and preparing land for planting crops. For the most part, they had little money, and no food resources, so a number of them had to take work in Philadelphia to make food possible. They had no horses; the walk in to Philadelphia was six miles and took two hours. In March 1684 Pastorius wrote, “Two hours from here [Philadelphia] lies our Germantown, where already forty-two people live in twelve homes, who are for the most part linen weavers, and not much given to agriculture. These honest people spent all their means on their journey, so that where provision was not made for them by W. Penn, they were obliged to serve others. They have, by repeated wanderings back and forth made quite a good road all the way to Germantown.8” Their privations were enormous, but they managed; and by spring they were planting. Crefeld had been known as a center for weaving; this was the talent they brought with them--it was a highly prized skill at the time--and their first crops planted in the spring of 1684 were vegetables and basic grains, to eat, and flax, to weave. By late summer, they were weaving linens. In 1684 five children were born, but that summer the real growth was an influx of another seven families, almost all Dutch, mostly from Crefeld, including Ennecke Klostermann, who apparently immigrated on her own. She was 24 years old and well educated, with enough funds to buy fifty acres--lot #16 East-- the only woman to do so in early Germantown. She would in 1688 marry Daniel Pastorius, tying him even more deeply into the family of the settlement, and bearing his two sons John Samuel and Henry. More lots were surveyed and bought, and their clearing begun. Pastorius kept track of most of these transactions in his Grund und lager buch (Ground and lot book). 9 There was a great deal of buying and selling land on the part of the settlers throughout this period that is only dimly illuminated by the lot-ownership lists of 1689 and 1714 (given in the Addenda).10 Every year more immigrants came. After Crefeld completed its Quaker exodus by 1685, the next arriving flock emptied Cresheim’s Friends (1684-87), also mostly Dutch Mennonites- turned-Quakers, but also some unreconstructed Mennonites as well, and eventually small numbers of ethnic Germans. Pastorius had been agitating his European contacts for more Germans, as the Dutch proved harder to please. By 1689, the number of resident families on Main Street, now extending to Abington Road and lot #23 (for 44 lots in all), had jumped from 13 to 43. Every year they produced more linen. They had the support of William Penn, who encouraged Provincial fairs for the demonstration of local products. From the beginning, the settlers had a ready market in Philadelphia at Second and High (later Market) Streets. Their reputation for exceptionally fine fabrics grew steadily, and by the end of the century their market was the whole of the American colonies. Two grist mills [for grinding flour] opened outside Germantown: one about 1.4 miles to the east on Wingohocking Creek, built in 1683 by Richard Townsend. He was an English Quaker who arrived in 1682 aboard the Welcome with Penn, bringing from London the necessities for

8 Pennypacker, Ibid. Page 88. 9 Now in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with a translation by Marion D. Learned. 10I owe much to Rob Smith’s work in putting together the display on the 1688 anti-slavery manifesto, which includes these lists. 7 making a mill (see Fig. 3).11 Also, Andrew Robeson, a member of our meeting, built a grist mill a mile to the west in Roxborough in 1690. The settlers lacked horses, so grain had to be brought and flour returned on the back. These roads branching off from Main Street were well used. One of the settlers, Heinrich Frei, an actual German, completed his period of indenture--usually six years--to Gerhard Hendricks by 1691, immediately purchased lot #18 West and married his sweetheart, Anna Catherine Levering, daughter of settler Wigart Levering. Frei is credited with importing from Sweden the first horses of Germantown, probably in the early 1690s.

Fig. 3 Townsend’s Mill, on Mill Road, no date referenced12

In 1687, an Amsterdamer (although originally from Mulheim, Germany) named William Rittenhausen bought lot #19 East from Peter Kurlis. Finding a good location nearby on the Wissahickon Creek, he and his son Nicholas moved their families there in 1690 and built the first paper mill in the American colonies. Since up to this time all paper had to be imported from Europe at rather great expense, home-grown paper proved an immediate boost to the local economy. Between linens and paper, Germantown had valued exports and prospered. A Mennonite, Rittenhausen’s original lot #19 East became the site of the first (1706) log- cabin Mennonite Church, and Rittenhausen its first minister. He became, in 1708, the first-ever Mennonite Bishop in the New World. How well the Germantowners did is reflected in the tax list of 1693, where the City of Philadelphia, now with a population somewhere around 4000, paid £200 in toto; Germantown, with its 70-odd citizens, paid £51, exceeded only by Northern Liberties, the farmlands surrounding the City (£60) and Merion, packed with the quite numerous Welsh (£70). Throughout, Daniel Pastorius acted as the community’s representative in Philadelphia and legal advisor at home, and scribe for any who needed it. Only a few of the Crefelders had a little English; others were illiterate in any language. Pastorius provided all the documentation they required, keeping their records--especially of their many land transfers. He began an account book for his Germantown transactions, beginning it with a credit on behalf of the settlers: “For the Friends, Lots of Love.”

11 This mill stood approximately where today Church Lane intersects 20th Street, on the east bank of the Wingohocking, now well underground. Townsend built a home further to the east and attended Cheltenham Meeting of Dublin Monthly Meeting. Later it was known as Robert’s Mill, and then Luckens’ Mill. 12 Keyser, Ibid. Page 23. 8

Fig. 4 Said to be the log cabin of Daniel Pastorius, c1685 (no citation)

Germantown Homes If they started with “caves,” they moved on as quickly as they could to log-cabins, mostly by their second year. With the exception of Gerhard Hendricks (see below), all built right on Main Street, so that their homes lined up in two rows, gables facing each other across the street in a very European manner. This exceptionally linear organization was one of Germantown’s most distinctive features. In 1690, Aret Klincken built the first two-story log house on lot # 20 West; most of the rest were one or one-and-a-half stories. William Penn attended the celebration of its completion. The next step for almost everyone was a stone house. The stones were there, a characteristic dark, mica-rich granite, in ready profusion as they cleared their land for planting. They certainly had plenty of trees, too, and Townsend’s mill also could serve as a saw mill, but without draft animals they had no easy way of transporting logs to the mill, or lumber back. In any case, from its earliest days Germantown was known for its stone houses. It is not known which of them built the first stone house, just that in the end most of them did. But not all: one early house was erected by Jacob Telner. It was on Main Street on lot #9 West immediately below Bensel’s (now Schoolhouse) Lane, “being a frame building filled in with brick…Joint meetings [of Mennonites and Friends] were often held in this house…It is said William Penn spoke at some of these meetings.”13 It will be seen later that Telner was very rich and had a house in Philadelphia also, where brick was the preferred medium. He may have bypassed both the cave and the log-cabin, and perhaps had this house built as early as 1685. One very early stone house may have been one called “the Rock House.” Lot #8 East was drawn and bought in 1684 by two Cresheimers, David Sherkes and Gerhard Hendricks with Sherkes taking the northern half, which he sold to Isaac Shoemaker in 1697, and Hendricks the southern. In 1687 Hendricks did the unusual thing and did not build on Main Street, but instead a half mile to the east, on the east side of Wingohocking Creek’s west branch. He also may have bypassed the log-cabin stage, directly building a stone house. Sadly, he did not have much time to enjoy it, for he died in 1691. Hendricks’ sole heir was his daughter Sarah, then sixteen years old, making her probably the youngest lot-owner and home-owner of Germantown. She became

13 Keyser et al., History of Old Germantown, Horace F. McCann, Philadelphia, 1907. Page 311. Keyser furthermore says that this house was torn down in 1795. 9 affianced to her second-cousin Isaac Shoemaker of Shoemakertown, four miles east.14 They married in 1694 under the care of Abington Monthly Meeting, and lived in the house on the Wingohocking, making it the center of “Shoemaker’s First Farm,” and had five children. The pictured building (in Figs. 5 and 6) in the rear may have been the one built by Hendricks, “a one- story stone house with a tall peaked roof.”

Fig.5 Shoemaker’s First Farm Fig. 6 Rock House, 1908. Library Company of Philadelphia15

Isaac became a tanner, whose tannery was established just off Main Street, a little south of where East Coulter Street is now. Eventually, they built a new two-story stone-built house called “Shoemaker House,” on Main Street and Shoemaker Lane (now Penn St) a little north of the tannery. The picture appears to show a three-story house, but that door on the street is a basement door, their “back door” onto Shoemaker Lane. The main door, visible at the east end of the house, away from Main Street, as in Dutch custom, is on the ground floor.16

14 Two Shoemaker brothers, Peter and Joseph, were early settlers in Germantown with homes on Main Street. They had a third brother, George, who died in transit to Pennsylvania in 1686 aboard the Jeffrey, leaving his widow Sarah to cope as best she could with her seven children. She was apparently a formidable woman; Sarah did not join her brothers-in-law in Germantown but went instead to a neighboring community Cheltenham, where she bought 200 acres. In 1694, her eldest son George Jr married Sarah Wall, the only child of Richard Wall, the principal Friend of Cheltenham--his house being where local Friends gathered for worship. When Wall died around 1701, his daughter and her husband inherited all his property, making the Shoemakers Cheltenham’s first citizens. Cheltenham came to be called “Shoemakertown,” as it is represented on 18th century maps of Philadelphia County. Wall House is still there, a tourist destination. 15 Fig. 5 comes from Keyser, Ibid. Page 277, and no date is referenced. If the rear building was Hendricks’, then the two-story edifice in front was a later addition—who knows when. Fig. 6 is a 1908 photograph (in the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia) of the Rock House, at East Penn Street and Belfield Avenue, in 1908 still a Germantown historic site. It was subsequently torn down. 16 Fig. 7 from Keyser, Ibid. Page 274. No year is referenced. In 1847 the building was taken down to make room for development (see The Golden Age of Germantown.). In the 1820s most of Germantown’s stone homes were refaced with white plaster, so the image was likely created after 1820. 10

Fig. 7 Shoemaker House on Shoemaker Lane, probably after 1820

Main Street was fronted on both sides with a mile-long string of dark, stone-built homes. One of the earliest regional historians, John Fanning Watson collected impressions and personal recollections and published them in 1830.17 He wrote, “Most of the old homes in Germantown are plastered on the inside with clay and straw mixed, and over it is laid a finishing coat of thin lime plaster; some of these old homes seem to be made with log frames and the interstices filled with wattles, river rushes, and clay intermixed. In a house of ninety years of age, taken down, the grass in the clay appeared as green as when cut. Probably twenty houses now remain of the primitive population18. They are of but one story, so low that a man six feet high can readily touch the eves of the roof. Their gable ends are to the street. The ground story is of stone or of logs—or sometimes the front room is of stone, and the back room is of logs, and thus they have generally one room behind the other. The roof is high and mostly hipped, forms a low bed chamber; the ends of the houses above the first story are of boards or sometimes of shingles, with a small chamber window at each end. Many roofs were then tiled…The doors all divide in the middle, so as to have an upper and a lower door.” Watson goes on to note that the windows were set in leaded frames. From this we may conclude that the first stone houses were often single-storied, many built butting onto the original log cabins, and that within a few generations these first stone houses were replaced by larger homes. Several aspects of these houses are very “Dutch”: for instance, the gabled ends all faced the Main Street, the main doors did not face the street, and the main doors were divided, the upper half opening independently of the lower half.

The Once and future borough of Germantown Pastorius had long had the dream of completing his job by making his settlement into a formal borough of Pennsylvania, and he no doubt hectored the settlers into asking Penn for a charter. This Penn was very pleased to do in 1691, writing “And I doe by these presents nominate...the said Francis Daniel Pastorius of German Towne…to be the first and present Bailiffe [Mayor], and…Jacob Telner, Dirck Isaacs Opte Graaf, Herman Isaacs Opte Graaf and Tennis Coender to be the first and present Burgesses…” continuing on to list six others as councilmen. Germantown was now as official as it could get. Furthermore, all the settlers were now proper citizens, as just earlier that same year Thomas Lloyd, the Deputy Governor, had 17 Watson, John Fanning, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time…, Edwin S Stuart, Philadelphia, Three editions: 1830, 1844, 1879 (references here are to the third). 18 None of these would be found today, although traces of them may be found, such as in the oldest part of Wyck. 11 come to town to “naturalize” them all--mainly to eliminate any possibility that as non-citizens they would not be permitted to own property in the province. However, questions as to the legitimacy of this ceremony were later raised, so they had to do it all over again in 1709. Historians are usually astonished at the powers that Penn’s Charter gave to the Germantowners; no other borough seems to have been so favored. They could raise taxes, write and enforce their own laws, and elect themselves (after the initial appointments by Penn, the town officials would meet once a year to elect the next set—which could be themselves, but mostly were not. There were no elections as we now know them). One of the names in the charter, Jacob Telner, is not of the initial list from Crefeld. Telner was a Quaker from Amsterdam, and after meeting Penn in 1677 travelled promptly to the New World where he toured the colonies. When he returned to Holland in 1681, he relocated to Crefeld, where he was probably the richest man in town, and the largest individual purchaser of land from Penn in 1682, when he bought some 5000 acres. In 1684, rather than following the townsmen to Germantown, he shipped to New York. Only two decades before, this city had still been New Amsterdam, the Dutch West India Company’s New World mercantile outpost--and not, strictly speaking, a colony. Recently (in 1664) it had been wrested away--at gunpoint--by the English and renamed. There Telner entertained himself bedeviling the Dutch Reformed19 congregations. A local minister complained, “[Telner] has dared, may God help us, to disturb public divine service at Breuckelen and Midwout [Brooklyn and Midwood] … he comes… singing into the church. He pushes himself forward and sits down near the pulpit. After public prayer he rises and calls out loudly, that it has been revealed to him by God to say something to this congregation which is now without a pastor; that they had been deceived by a false divine service, he is sent to them to preach the true and living God.”20 In the Spring of 1685, he showed up in Germantown and took up residence as the largest local landowner. He maintained a house also in Philadelphia, and developed a community called Telner’s Township out on the Skippack Creek. Shortly after being appointed to high office in the new borough, however, Telner returned to Europe, decided he preferred to stay there and came back to Philadelphia just to clean up his affairs before returning to Amsterdam in 1696 for good. Pastorius, however, had misjudged his citizens, and did not take into account the central fact that they were Quakers. They all cooperatively took turns at the various offices the new township required, including, for instance, constable and fence-examiners (to enforce new ordinances of fence maintenance), but fairly quickly they became disenchanted with the business of governing. Its time requirements really interfered with their ability to run their proper businesses. But even more, they discovered that the function of government was an awful lot like the duties of being a paid church minister21: telling others what to think and do, God forbid. Serving in the court, even serving as a fence examiner, put them looking over the shoulders of their neighbors and telling them how to live. They didn’t like it, and starting in 1701, one by one they declared themselves unwilling to serve because it was against their religious beliefs.22

19 The Lutherans followed Martin Luther, the Reformed churches followed John Calvin; Lutheranism and Calvinism were the two major flavors of Protestantism. 20 William Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvanhia, Swarthmore College Monographs, Number 2, Patterson and White, Philadelphia, 1935. Page 246. 21 Friends used the unfriendly term “hireling minister” for such creatures. 22 In this their experience was ironically very different from that of the Philadelphia Friends (see An Holy Experiment, although PYM’s Rules of Discipline in 1710 advised against taking government positions. 12

They didn’t need to worry about it for long. Others had noted the unusual powers granted to the borough; a Queen’s Counsel--that is, a lawyer respondent to the Crown, not to Penn’s government--was appointed to investigate, found irregularities, and suspended the Germantown Court indefinitely in 1707. Germantown surrendered its charter, which would be reinstituted 140 years later in 1847. Meanwhile, they went back to being a distant township of Philadelphia County, a relationship they were more comfortable with.

Germantown Marketplace During their brief governmental phase, certain essential infrastructural changes had come about that would remain: e.g., widening of the Main Street and the formal public recognition and widening of several cross streets that had, up to then, been “private,” belonging to the lot owners. Access was necessary, of course, for those who had need to go east or west, but some of the lot owners tended to be grudging, feeling that their property rights were being invaded. Some of the earliest laws of the new borough required that such access be granted, with stiff fines for refusal. By 1707 all the roads were acknowledged public rights-of-way. These included especially:

--Abington Road (now Washington Lane), running east 5 ½ miles to Abington, where Meeting for Discipline will be held once a month until 1816; --Rittenhouse Mill Road (now Rittenhouse Street), which went west to the papermill, between lots 14 and 15 West; --Shoemaker Lane (now Penn Street) which went east 4 miles to Cheltenham, between lots 6 and 7 East; --Cross Street to the Schuylkill (now Queen Lane, but variously called Robeson’s Mill and Ashmead Street also), went west 2 ½ miles to the river, between lots #5 and 6 West. The Schuylkill River was navigable to the Schuylkill Falls at this time, so that Cross Street represented Germantown’s connection to the river and its freight and transportation potential; --Most importantly, Bensel’s Lane (later School Street, now School House Lane) between lots 9 and 10 to the west, which continued on east of Main Street as Mill Road (now Church Lane) to Townsend’s Mill, between lots 9 and 10 East. This crossing was all-important because this is where they determined to locate their center of government and market place. This is not where Pastorius had originally envisaged the marketplace: that was an acre at the Main Street end of lot #5 West, which in the 1683 lot-drawing had been reserved for the Pietist owners (a few years later the Frankford Company). Pastorius’s Grund und Lager Buch says that the purpose was “one acre of land for a Market, Town-House, Burying place and other public buildings.” In 1685, Pastorius sold the remainder of lot #5 West to Paul Wolff. After 1691, when the newly chartered Germantown Government decided it wanted to establish its central locus a little further north, this occasioned a complex suite of land transactions that by 1701: (1) gave them a one-acre square, called “the Market Green,” at the Main Street end of James Delaplaine’s lot #15 East; (2) gave Paul Wolff a now-complete lot #5 West; and (3) gave Germantown two new non-denominational burial grounds: Upper and Lower Burial Grounds, located just above Abington Road and below Lot #1 East respectively. These were the first known dedicated burial grounds in town. Prior to this, dead folk were mostly buried in their own lots. 13

In 1704 they built a pound and a prison on the Green. I infer from the need for an animal pound, together with an emphasis on fencing laws and enforcers, that loose animals were among their more pressing concerns. It also suggests that they now had plenty of draft animals. As to the prison, Keyser relates, “This log prison could not have been very secure. Adam Hogermoed was at one time confined there for intemperance, but his friends came in the night, pried up one corner of the building and set him at liberty…When the town lost its charter, the prison was sold and Hogermoed bought it. He then removed it to a spot near where Armat Street now is and occupied it as a residence.” Once established in 1704, Market was held once a week at the Green, although it apparently never became a center of mercantile activity, even after a market building was erected forty years later. Most of Germantown’s businessmen did business from their homes, strung along Main Street. Pastorius had had peach trees planted along Main Street; by this time, they were fruiting.

The Frankfort Company and John Henry Sprogel The Frankfort Company, with Pastorius as its agent, was then the initial owner of much of the Germantown property, sold in lots to settlers. Its Pietist owners decided after all not to emigrate, which decision distressed Pastorius; he felt a little betrayed, as he had agreed to be their (unpaid) agent on the assurance that they would be emigrating someday soon. Communications were difficult, some of the company leaders died, some sold their interests, and what with one thing and another Pastorius became less enthused at being their agent, but agreed to continue in that role until 1700, when he finally resigned. On this, the Frankfort Company appointed three replacements: Daniel Falckner, Johannes Kelpius and Johannes Jawert, prohibiting any one from acting alone, but permitting two to act together. Initially, Falckner performed his duties diligently and to the approval of the settlement, even to the point of being honored by election to the top job of “Bailiff” of Germantown in 1701. Unfortunately, thereafter he became a drunk and highly erratic. Germantown Court records includes an entry dated 28 November 1704: “Daniel Falkner coming into Court behaved himself very ill, like one that was last night drunk, and not yet having recovered his witts. He railed most grievously on the Recorder, Simon Andrews, and the Bailiff, Aret Klincken, as persons not fit to sit on a court…and more like enormities.” He was eventually, after more of the same, ejected by the Sheriff, William DeWees.23 As a result, Kelpius refused to work with him, and eventually took himself off to become a Pietist hermit, and Jawert helplessly looked on from his home in Maryland. In November 1705, Jawert nailed a notice onto the new Friends Meeting House in Germantown that said that no one should pay “any Rent or other Debt due to the Company unto the said Falckner.” At this point, business with the Frankfort Company completely stalled. Enter John Henry Sprogel, a wonderfully classic villain out of a melodrama. He first appeared as the agent of Benjamin Furley, a Dutch Quaker and William Penn’s principal agent in Holland. Furley is also known for having advised Penn in 1682 to permit no importation of new slaves into Pennsylvania, and to require immigrants who already had slaves to free them within eight years. Regrettably, Penn did not follow his advice; perhaps it was because he owned 12 slaves on his estate Pennsbury. Furley was very busy negotiating land sales in Pennsylvania and sent Sprogel as his official agent to Philadelphia. However, as the result of Sprogel’s treatment of two young

23 Keyser, Ibid. Page 48. 14

Friends,24 Furley furiously wrote cancelling his agency, telling Sprogel to “repent and reform.” He did not. Furley’s letter arrived on a later boat, too late to prevent Sprogel’s immediate acts. When he arrived in Philadelphia, he sold off, as his own, goods he had been entrusted to bring on behalf of Furly and other Dutch merchants. Furthermore, he attempted a most brazen ploy. The British at this point were at war with the French; Sprogel said that a French ship had captured and burned the ship he was on, en route to America, releasing him in Amsterdam, but destroying all his papers, including those which he claimed showed his new ownership of the Frankfort Company! When no one paid any attention, he took the claim to Court, but, of course, without proof got nowhere. He developed good relations with Falckner, but Jawert resisted his approaches, in particular after Sprogel attempted to offer him a frank bribe. Sprogel and Falckner now approached David Lloyd, a young lawyer who was apparently a pretty influential member of William Penn’s advisory staff, and well known in colonial politics.25 He had been, for example, Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1701. Sprogel and Falckner sweetened their conversation with the offer of 1000 acres--of Furly’s land--very cheap. Accepting it, Lloyd advised asking the Court for an Act of Ejectment, ejecting the Frankfort Company as the land-owner of record, and substituting Sprogel, explaining how this might be accomplished. First, the action had to be kept secret from all interested parties, so it would be undefended. This they were able to do with a few judicious bribes to those officers of the Court who would otherwise publish coming actions. Second, he advised bringing the action at the very last moment, just as the Court was breaking up at the end of its judicial season, so that the presiding Judge would be least interested in hearing any more than he absolutely needed. Third, Lloyd advised neutralizing the four lawyers active in the County by paying them each a fee, so that the lawyers could not ethically act against them if, in the last minute, someone attempted to mobilize a defense. Fourth, Falckner would support the claim as an official agent of the company--with legitimate papers. Finally, Lloyd would appear with them, so that assurance by his very presence would indicate that everything was on the up-and-up. And it worked! Exactly as Lloyd had said. On January 15, 1708, Sprogel left the Court the new controller of the Germantown lands that had been still in Frankfort Company control. Happily, it made no difference to those lots previously sold to settlers. Within Germantown, this change affected five lots only: #7 West, #19 West and the 3-lot #13 East, about 275 acres in all, but still a major windfall for Sprogel. In addition, he gained considerable other acreage outside of Germantown. Pastorius and Jawert immediately complained to the Provincial Council, which heard them and concluded that they were indeed victims of a “monstrous crime.” Nonetheless, the Court action was never reversed.26 It might have been different if Pastorius’ close friends William Penn and Thomas Lloyd were still around, but Penn had left in 1701, never to return, and Lloyd had died in 1694. Sprogel thrived, and in 1719 even gave 50 of his ill-gotten Germantown acres to the Lutherans on which to build a church. David Lloyd was a member of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (PMM), which in 1711 was advised by Jawert and Pastorius of his bad behavior. Lloyd denied all illegality and any intent to defraud, and for over six months an appointed committee of PMM met and deliberated, unable to come to any firm conclusion, finally deciding to let things lie as they were, but making it clear to

24 Sorry, I don’t know what he did to them. 25 Frederick Tolles, in Meeting House and Counting House described David Lloyd as “a brilliant and perhaps somewhat unscrupulous lawyer.” Page 15. 26 By this time the council had no real power, certainly not to reverse judicial decisions. 15

Lloyd that he remained with a cloud of suspicion over his head. Related to this or not, Lloyd and his wife Grace transferred to Chester MM the following year.27 Some historians regard Falckner as another of Sprogel’s victims; he certainly seems to have been vulnerable. Indeed, he appears otherwise to have played a very positive role in the region. Aside from his duties as a Frankford Company agent, he was a German Reformed Pastor. As a land agent, he developed and sold a tract of land described--in German--as Schwamm land, or “meadowland” for the Frankfort Company, chose to live there himself, and then became the pastor of the church that served the resulting community—which came to be known as “Falkner’s Swamp”. This name is preserved today in Falkner Swamp Reformed Church, on Swamp Pike in New Hanover, the first German Reformed Church in America. After the Sprogel imbroglio, Falckner left the region in 1709 for a pastorage in northern New Jersey, remaining in that area the rest of his life.

Germantown Friends Even in the fall and winter of their first struggling year, Crefeld Meeting pulled itself together and began to meet regularly in individual homes, in particular that of Thones Kunders (lot #2 East), but most likely in others’ homes as well. There were 23 adult members in the fall of 1683, which number had dropped to 21 before the winter was out, although it is likely that the (probable) Mennonites Jan Lensen and his wife regularly joined them in worship. Whether they thought of themselves as Crefeld Meeting or as Germantown Meeting is not known. In the first years, many if not most of the settlers joining them were also Friends coming from Crefeld or Cresheim, and their numbers swiftly increased until 1686, when adult membership can be computed to be at least 58, possibly supplemented by a few who had joined them from Philadelphia (such as Pastorius himself, perhaps, or his servants). These were numbers too great to fit into a settler’s home, and the decision was made in 1686 to build a log-cabin meetinghouse on one of Abraham op den Graeff’s lots, #8 West, just off Main Street. Abraham was one of the richer of the settlers; he owned several lots and was one of the very few who could manage to make a portion of land available in this way. He subsequently sold this plot, complete with meetinghouse, to Jacob Shoemaker in 1689; Shoemaker sold it to Heivert Papen in 1693, and Papen sold it to Friends in 1705 on which to build their new larger stone meeting house--and yes, we are still here on lot #8 West, three meeting houses and 334 years later. I presume that op den Graeff, Shoemaker and Papen all intended that, in the end, this plot would become Meeting property.28 Perhaps it was the building of a log-meetinghouse in 1686 that caught the attention of the Philadelphia Quaker establishment; perhaps it was news of a fire that Dirck op den Graff brought to Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, seeking some financial help. In March of 1687, Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting (PQM) asked the PQM representatives from Dublin Monthly Meeting, Joseph Paull and Richard Townsend--he of the mill-- “to speak with the German friends to know what monthly meeting they do, or are willing to belong unto."29 Paull and Townsend duly made their way to Germantown and eventually reported back to PQM in June of the same year: “Joseph Paul and Richard Townsend report to this meeting that the monthly meeting they belong unto

27 Lloyd was not helped by the fact that he was a lawyer. As a profession, lawyers at that time were held in considerable suspicion by Friends. Under the Rules of Discipline, consulting a lawyer was very strictly limited, and outside those limits you could be disowned for doing so. 28 There is very little documentation concerning this log-cabin meeting house, and it may not have been built until 1690—and may even have not been built at all, although I believe that this is very unlikely, knowing Friends. 29 See Quaker Administrative Issues in the Addenda of this paper. 16 hath taken care about the necessities of some friends that hath received damage by fire amongst the Germans, and that their occasions are answered, and they return answer that they are willing to belong unto Dublin Monthly Meeting.” Thus was Germantown Meeting integrated into Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1687. A brief tangential discursion into the history of Joseph Paull brings to light an unexpected glimpse into settler motivations. Paull was born into a Quaker family in Somerset County in the south of England. During the reign of Cromwell, despite Cromwell’s personal sympathy, Quakers were severely persecuted by the Puritans in power, 30 and Joseph’s family suffered greatly from it. Nonetheless, emigrating to the New World was not considered a seemly response; indeed, it was seen as somewhat shaming, a cowardly escape from the duty of serving one’s faith in oppression--at least in Somerset. When Charles II, a Catholic, was restored in 1660, nothing changed for the Quakers, as the Catholics were no more tolerant than the Puritans had been. Charles’ son James II succeeded to the throne in 1682, and his half-brother the Duke of Monmouth rebelled in May of 1685. His rebellion was quickly put down, the Quakers keeping their heads well down. This has nothing to do with us, they thought; but they were wrong. “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys came to town and told everyone that failure to serve the King’s cause was treason, and a capital offense, and began hanging just about everybody. Suddenly, emigrating was okay. They were being hanged not for being Quaker, but because they, as well as a large host of other non-combatants, had not served the King. Joseph left as quickly as he could, and came to Oxford Township, a small Friendly community to the northeast of Philadelphia early in 1686. No sooner did he join the local Oxford meeting, one of three particular meetings under the banner of Dublin MM (Oxford, Byberry and Cheltenham meetings), than he found himself appointed to attend Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting on behalf of Dublin MM. Slavery petition When the Crefelders first arrived, they may not have known that the Philadelphia colony was already well invested into a slave economy—indeed, that slaves were already possessed by some of those who inhabited the region even before Penn, and that Penn, himself, owned slaves. Very quickly, city Friends bought slaves, too. It was felt to be absolutely an economic necessity, for there was so much work to be done, and just not enough hands to do it. Plenty of slaves were available, mostly arriving through the Barbados colony. George Fox, in his travels in the New World in the 1670s also observed the fact of slavery, and strongly recommended that slaves be treated humanely, and in particular be introduced to Christianity that their souls might be saved. But Fox never said anything that suggested he thought the practice was wrong. No doubt the Crefelders were somewhat shocked, when they learned of it, probably through those who had to earn money in the city. No doubt they would have asked Daniel Pastorius about it, and he would have confirmed it. They mulled it over, deciding what they should do. In 1688, Pastorius drafted the Petition Against Slavery, signed by himself, Gerhard Hendricks, the meeting clerk, and Dirck and Abraham op den Graff. Pastorius is widely credited with writing the Petition, but some historians cautiously point out that while it may be in his handwriting, its English is much cruder than other works he wrote. They suggest that he translated it only from the Dutch original, with relatively little editing. The other signers may have written it in committee (see the text in the addenda at the end of this piece).

30 The Puritans were extremely conservative (intolerant) Calvinists, and, as such, found much to despise in Quakers. 17

Dirck op den Graeff, accompanied by Pastorius, who probably did most of the talking, took it to Dublin Monthly Meeting31 and subsequently to Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting. At both the document was read aloud and all agreed that, as Jonathan Hart wrote on it, “We find it so weighty that we think it not Expedient for us to meddle with it here, but do Rather commit it to the consideration of the Quarterly Meeting.” There Anthony Morris wrote, “This was read at our quarterly meeting of Philadelphia …and was from thence recommended to the yearly meeting … it being a thing of too great a weight for this meeting to determine.” The Yearly Meeting, however, was not impressed: “At a Yearly Meeting held at Burlington the 5th day of the 7th month, 1688 … A paper here presented by some German Friends Concerning the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Buying and Keeping Negroes, It was adjusted not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgement in the case, It being to General a Relation to many other Parts, and therefore at present they forbear It.” 32 According to Thomas Drake, the most important historian on slavery and Quakerism, this translates as “[PYM] could not condemn slaveholding as too many Friends owned slaves … especially outside Pennsylvania.” But the minutes do not show what discussion may have been aroused, and Drake’s suspicion is that there might not have been much. At this point, many wealthy PYM Quakers, including William Penn and Isaac Norris, were already engaged in slavery, like everyone else out of economic necessity, and indeed, over the next half century Friends increased their slaveholding and slave-trading while at the same time vigorously resisting efforts, especially from rural meetings, to suggest that slavery was iniquitous to any degree at all. The George Keith problem Religious trouble arose in the early 1690s. An English Quaker named George Keith, who had traveled in Europe in earlier years of ministry with Fox and Penn, came to East New Jersey as Surveyor-General in 1685, but acted as a traveling minister, often called then a “public Friend”, preaching widely and very charismatically. Keith was, in fact, like Barclay and Penn, a trained theologian. He was convinced that Quakers were straying too far from established Christianity, and that, in particular, they had so deified the idea of the “Christ within” that they were in danger of losing the “real Christ.” This message was repugnant to Friends in Philadelphia, and Keith was disavowed by PYM as a schismatic, and disowned by his meeting in 1692—although this did not slow him down in the slightest. One of his ministries was, notably, antislavery. He spoke loudly and divisively to many, including a number of Germantown Meeting members. For example, two of the three op den Graeff brothers--Abraham and Herman--followed Keith, while Dirck remained a regular Friend. When Keith returned in 1694 to England, he was declared a schismatic also by London Yearly Meeting. Unable to preach to Friends, Keith became an Anglican, and later an Anglican Bishop. In the aftermath, Abraham and Herman returned to their Mennonite roots. Both brothers chose soon to relocate. In 1701, Herman and his family moved to Delaware; in 1704, Abraham moved to a Mennonite community on the Skippack Creek.33 Two other Keithians, John Doeden and David Sherkes, returned to the Germantown meeting fold.

The state of Germantown meeting

31 Held at Richard Worral’s house, as noted on the petition. 32 Drake, Thomas, Quakers and Slavery in America, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1950. Quote from PYM minutes for the day, September 15, 1688. Page 12. 33This was founded by Matthias van Bebber (second son of settler Jacob Isaacs van Bebber), who bought over 6600 acres on the Skippack and Perkiomen Creeks and created what was quickly called “Bebber’s Township.” 18

By 1705, the Germantown log-cabin meeting house was too small; the Meeting decided to build a larger and more permanent replacement made of stone. They undertook a subscription from meeting members; the list of subscribers, 26 men and one woman is far from a complete list of members, but it is the only list that exists before the first membership list of 1807 (see Addenda). The list is especially interesting for another reason: one of the most enigmatic aspects of Pastorius’ life is the uncertainty of his final religious home. He began as a Lutheran, and perhaps became a Pietist--but still a Lutheran--in 1682. For the rest of his life he very clearly associated himself with the Quakers in Germantown. There is a good deal of evidence that suggests that he joined Friends--joined Germantown Meeting in particular--but it is inconsistent and uncertain. This list is in Pastorius’s hand, he describes the list as “members of Germantown Meeting,” and includes his own name. It is, I think, the strongest piece of evidence for Pastorius’s having become a Friend and member of our meeting. The rest of the money was supplied by donations from Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and the other meetings of Abington Monthly Meeting—formerly Dublin MM.34 A stone meeting house was built on the south-east corner of the Friends Burial Ground (what we now call the “old” burial ground) just off Main Street. The date 1705 was chiseled onto the stone that rested above the main doorway. Hotchkin writes, “When Germantown was settled, the Mennonites and Quakers were the two religious bodies of the town. At first their meetings were held in private houses, and it is supposed that at times they worshipped together in the same house till the building of their own meeting houses. It is not known that they had a special burying place, and the dead were probably buried in their own grounds. When the Friends’ Meeting House was built in 1705, and the Mennonite Church in 1706, each building had its graveyard adjoining it for the ‘burial of members of each body’.”35 However, if in 1686 it was the intention that this lot would become meeting property, it is possible that Friends began to use this lot as their burial ground as early as that year; but we may never know this for sure. There were members of other faiths in Germantown probably as early as 1685, but no churches anywhere nearby for them to attend for a number of decades. Dutch Reformed services, for instance, started intermittently around 1730. While Pastorius’s Pietists failed to follow him, another very mystical Pietist group did arrive in 1694, which called themselves “Hermits of the Wissahickon” and attempted to form an ideal community, living very roughly on the edges of that creek. One of their leaders, Heinrich Bernhard Kuster, according to Edward Hocker,36 “began holding religious services in Germantown, in the home of Jacob van Bebber … Though akin to the Quakers and Mennonites in some of their beliefs … the Pietists nominally adhered to the Lutheran faith.” Kuster began leading services in Germantown three days a week, and once a week in Philadelphia, and was apparently quite attractive. “As Kuster preached both in German and English …they were the first Lutheran services held in America in the English language” and “attracted English- speaking residents of Philadelphia to whom the Friends’ meetings in that city did not appeal, and who did not understand the language used in the Swedish Lutheran church below the city. So large was the proportion of the attendants from the city, that Kuster was led to have all his services in Philadelphia.” This was about the time that George Keith, having been rejected by PYM, left town to return to London. Many Keithians came to Kuster. However, it was not long 34 See Pastorius’ fiscal accounts of its building in the Addenda at the end of this paper. 35 Hotchkin, S.F., Ancient and Modern Germantown, P. W. Ziegler and Co, Philadelphia, 1889; republished by Forgotten Books, Dalton Co, London, 2015. Page 170. 36 Hocker, Edward W., Germantown 1683 – 1933, Published privately, Germantown, 1933. Page 47. 19 before Kuster and the other Pietists fell into discord, and Kuster departed, to follow a meandering track that led eventually to his return to Germany. Johannes Kelpius, who would subsequently be named one of the three new agents for the Frankford Company, became leader of the group. Kelpius was considerably more mystical, and apparently made no effort to continue Kuster’s leadership of the Philadelphia congregation. By this time, however, it appears to have become self-sustaining, and others of the congregation kept it going. Ultimately, Kuster’s Pietist church developed into the Anglican Christ Church on Second Street. Back on the Wissahickon, the remaining Pietists continued to survive in their hermitage existence. Probably as a result of that rough existence, Kelpius died at the age of 35 in 1708, after which the remaining hermits dispersed. In 1706, The Mennonites initiated their log-built meeting house. That year, they listed 50 adults as members, their first minister being William Rittenhouse. Only some of those fifty lived in Germantown; many had already moved out to nearby townships like Roxborough and Bebberstown. Of those fifty, two only were from among the original 13 families: Jan Lensen, who probably had always retained his membership in the Mennonites, and John Conrad, a son of Thones Kunders. Conrad joined the Mennonites, and that same year married Jan Luckens’ daughter Alice, probably the first wedding celebrated in the new Mennonite Meeting House--and leading to another switch as Alice too joined the Mennonites. John and Alice Conrad had seven children; then she died in 1727. John Conrad returned very shortly after that to the Friends Meeting, and in 1728 married Elizabeth Dennis, daughter of settler Abraham Tunes. Abraham and Herman op den Graeff had both rejoined the Mennonites after the Keithian business, but both had also left the Germantown community, and were not on the Mennonite 1706 list. Unfortunately, we have no equivalent listing of Quaker names, and can only guess that our meeting was of generally similar size, probably a little larger, maybe 50-60 adults. In 1714, someone tallied up the ownership of the 44 Germantown plots (see the lists at the end of this paper). There had been some consolidation, and the number of different lot owners actually decreased from 43 to 37. By this time, quite a few families had moved into the “Cresheim” and “Summerhausen” districts (all considered still Germantown) north of Abington Road, so that the number of Germantown families in 1714 was in the fifties or even more. Only four of the original thirteen settlers are still listed on the 1714 list, although six lots out of thirteen had remained in the family. Thus, more than half of the thirteen 1683 families had moved on. Reynier Tyson and his family, for instance, had moved in 1700 to Abington and began to attend Cheltenham Meeting. Of the 37 families on the 1714 list, only three can be found on the first Germantown Preparative Meeting (GPM) membership list of 1807: Jansen (Johnson), Keyser and Kunders (Conrad). It would seem that a fairly high degree of mobility characterized Quakers of the period, and probably non-Quakers equally so. And I have found it generally true, researching the individual Friends buried in our burial ground, that it is the unusual Quaker who was born into our meeting and died there, never having moved around to other meetings during his or her life. Thus, the names changed as we shifted to the second generation; however, they remained mostly Dutch, and it is likely that Dutch was still the predominant language of messages in meeting for worship in GPM in the early years of the eighteenth century. However, the Dutch influx greatly dwindled, while the German did not, and the Dutch character of the Germantown settlement would be obscured and eventually swamped by the waves of German immigrants to come in the next century. There would also be a strong subsequent move, especially among the 20

Mennonites, westward into Lancaster and York Counties, and then to Western Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Pastorius’ school As perhaps his most important contribution to his settlement, Daniel Pastorius created a school here which he served as head from 1702 until his death in 1719. Germantown Meeting collected money towards its establishment, but it was not specifically a Meeting endeavor. It was, in fact, authorized officially by the borough, which appointed the Overseers--all of whom were Germantown Meeting Quakers. Once the borough ended in 1707, however, it is likely that it was our meeting that continued to support Pastorius’ school. Amazingly, there is no hint as to where this school was located, perhaps on Pastorius’ own lot (#16 East), but I think much more likely in our meeting house. In its first year, 14 families sent children; by its seventh year, that number had risen to 59. Pretty much every family, Quaker and Mennonite alike, even from the outlying communities, sent their children to Pastorius at a cost of four-to-sixpence per child per week. The subjects were practical and empirical, thus meeting the definition of a Quaker ‘guarded’ education. Pastorius’ biographer, Marion Dexter Learned,37 says that instruction was almost certainly in English. That second generation was still mainly Dutch-speaking as their first language; but their children would surely have been proficient English speakers, for a few, perhaps, still as a second language. As the years moved on, the proportion of messages in English in our meeting’s worship increased. It was otherwise in the German Reformed and Lutheran Churches of Germantown, once they got started, where the services remained firmly and exclusively in German through the whole of the 18th century and up to about 1820. We have minutes of GPM meetings from 1798 on; these minutes are in English exclusively. After Daniel Pastorius died in 1719, it is often commented on that no one knows where he was buried, as he had no known head stone. If he was a Friend and member of our meeting, of course, there is good reason for that lack: at that time Quaker discipline was firmly opposed to head stones.

Germantown Johnsons There is one name on the 1714 list of owners that we should take special note of: Conrad Jansen, for he is the single foremost link between the early Germantown settlers and all the coming years of our Meeting. Conrad Claus Jansen (1634-1718) came to Germantown in 1685 from Holland, a widower with his two sons Claus (16 years old) and Dirck (15 years). He bought lot #5 West from Paul Wolff. They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. About 1690, Conrad married again: to Feicken, the daughter of another settler, Jacob Neuss, who would soon move his family a little south of Germantown and establish what would be called “Nicetown”. Conrad, Feicken and his son Claus would move in 1702 to Bebber’s Township on the Skippack, becoming Mennonites, although retaining ownership of #5 West. Dirck, on the other hand, apprenticed to Paul Kastner (of #14 East), a weaver from Saxony, to learn the trade. Dirck met and wooed Margaret Millan, the daughter of Hans Millan, another Crefeld weaver, and they married in 1700. It is likely that at about this time Dirck became a Friend and member of our meeting, perhaps as a prelude to their marriage, for the Millans were Quaker.

37 Learned, Marion, The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, Philadelphia, William J. Campbell, 1908. Pastorius felt his own education, strong in philosophy, was mostly wasted because it lacked practicality. 21

It’s not certain just when Hans Millan came to Germantown, but it was probably around 1686. A widower, he brought with him two children, Margaret and Matthias. Like everyone else, he most likely dug out a cave, and cleared his land, and built a log cabin on lot #17 West, and then a stone house around 1690. After marrying, it is probable that Dirck and Margaret Jansen moved into Hans Milan’s house. After Hans died, they inherited lot #17 West, while Margaret’s brother Matthias Jansen inherited land in the “Cresheim” area north of Germantown. Dirck and Margaret Jansen raised six Johnson children, whom they sent to Pastorius’s school. Several of these would prove to have a later impact on Germantown or our meeting, and their descendants will appear on every membership list we have from 1807 on. Their daughter Katherine Johnson would marry Caspar Wistar, a German immigrant who made good (very); they would be prominent members of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, but would keep a summer home in Germantown: the house built with her father Dirck next to the original (1690) homestead. This house will return with Johnson descendants in the next essays, on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dirck and Margaret’s daughter Ann would marry Thomas Nedro, whose 1794 legacy, the Thomas Nedro Fund, is still active today, the backbone of our Assistance Committee’s resources. Dirck and Margaret’s son John would marry Agness Klincken, daughter of Aret Klincken, another settler, and they would have children whose families are found on future lists of members of GPM, and gravestones in both the old and new burial grounds. One of these, John Junior will have a descendant: Rebecca Warner Johnson, Dirck’s great-great-great-great-great- great granddaughter--add one more “great” to take it to Hans Millan or to Conrad Jansen; add yet another great for Rebecca and Lawrence’s daughters. Our member Rob Smith traces his ancestry to Reuben Haines, III, and tells me that so does Marianne (Nancy) Shipley Rhoads and her children and grandchildren. Without much further work, it is not possible to know how many members of our Meeting can trace their ancestry to Dirck Jansen, or to others of the settlers of that period. If other members of our meeting can trace their ancestry to the original settlers, I would be very interested in hearing about it.

Resources available on line: Learned, Marion Dexter, The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius…, William J Campbell, Philadelphia, 1908. Available on line as a Google Book. Keyser, Naaman, et al, History of Old Germantown, Horace F. McCann, Philadelphia, 1907. Pennypacker, Samuel Whitaker, The Settlement of Germantown…, William J. Campbell, Philadelphia, 1899. Watson, John Fanning, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time…, Edwin S Stuart, Philadelphia, 1830, 1844, 1879 (Three editions, references here are to the third).

Other resources: Hotchkin, Samuel Fitch, Ancient and Modern Germantown…, P. W. Ziegler & Co, Philadelphia, 1889. Republished by Forgotten Books, London, 2015. Hull, William I., William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College Monographs on Quaker History, Number 2, 1935. A Kessinger Legacy Reprint. Hocker, Edward W, Germantown 1688 – 1933, Self-published, Germantown, Philadelphia, 1933. 22

Harry and Margaret Tinkcom, Historic Germantown, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1955.

ADDENDA

GERMANTOWN SETTLEMENT: LOT OWNERS in 1689 and 1714 Arriva LOT 1689 Lot holders l 1714 Lot holders 1E Kurlis, Peter 1683 Kerling, Peter 1W Streypers, Jan [Willem] 1683 Shippen, Joseph 2E Kunders, Thones 1683 Conrad, Tunis 2W Op den Graeff, Dirck 1683 Op den Graeff, Nilken 3E Lensen, Jan 1683 Lenson, John 3W Op den Graeff, Herman 1683 Shippen, Joseph Op den Graeff, 3W Abraham 1683 Shippen, Joseph 4E Arets, Lenart 1683 Arets, Leonard 4W Seimens, Jan (died) 1683 Neiss, John 5E Tyson, Reynier 1683 von Sintern, Isaac 5W Wolff, Paul 1684 Jansen, Conrad 6E Lucken, Jan 1683 Castorp, Herman 6W Bleikers, Johannes 1683 Tunen, Herman 7E Tunes, Abraham 1683 Bonsaack, Jerod 7W Frankfurt Co Sprogel, John Henry 8E(S) Hendricks, Garret 1685 Shoemaker, Isaac 8E(N) Sherkes, David 1684 Shoemaker, Isaac 8W Shoemaker, Jacob 1684 Friends Meeting 9E Simons, Walter 1684 Simons, Walter 9W(S) van Bebber, Jacob 1687 Jarret, John 9W(N Telner, Jacob 1686 Jarret, John 10E(S) Kolk, Dirck Delaplaine, James 10E(N Levering, Wigart 1685 Delaplaine, James 10W Papen, Heivert 1685 Papen, Heivert 11E von Bonn, Herman 1685 Bom, Cornelius Jr 23

11W Klumpges, Jacob Conrad, Tunis 12E Sellen, Heinrich 1685 Doeden, John 12E Levering, Gerhard 1685 Doeden, John 12W Siverts, Cornelius 1684 Shwardtz, Cornelius 13E Frankfurt Co* Sprogel, John Henry 13W Umstadt, Hans Peter 1685 Hogermoed, George 14E Bonn, Cornelius** Kastner, Paul 14W Schumacher, Peter 1685 Shoemaker, Peter 15E Dilbeck, Isaac 1684 Geissler, Daniel 15W Telner, Jacob 1686 Williams, John 15W Hartsfelder, Julian 1684 Williams, John 16E Klostermann, Ennecke 1684 Pastorius, Daniel 16W Thompson, Claus Thompson, Nicholas 17E Doeden, John Doeden, John 17W Millan, Hans 1685 Jansen, Dirck 18E Suplis, Anders Warner, Christian 18W Frey, Heinrich(Henry) Zimmerman, Philip C 19E Rittenhausen, William 1687 von Fossen, Arnold 19W Cassel, Johannes 1686 Sprogel, John Henry 20E Rittenhausen, Claus 1687 Engle, Paul 20W Klincken, Aret Klincken, Anthony Op den Graeff, 20W Abraham 1683 21E Rittenhausen, Claus 1687 Lane, Hans Henry 21W Silans, Jan Engle, Paul 22E Keyser, Dirck 1688 Keyser, Dirck 23E Streypers, Willem 1683 Engle, Paul (43 families) (37 families) *Lot 13E had originally been drawn in 1685 by Isaac Schaeffer and Henry Bucholtz, but by 1689 they had apparently released it back to the Frankfurt Company 24

Quaker administrative issues Membership in Friends resides in the Monthly Meeting, not in the “particular meeting” (which is what a real and local collection of Friends worshipping together was first called); in this case, in 1687 Germantown was a particular meeting under the care of Dublin Monthly Meeting; it was one of four such particular meetings, the other three being: Cheltenham Meeting (which met at the home of Richard Wall); Oxford Meeting, also called Tacony, (worshipping at the home of Richard Worrall); Byberry Meeting (which met first in the home of Jonathan Hart--until he decamped as a Keithian, and then in the home of Henry English). It is of special interest to note that a very early map of Philadelphia and its eastern environs, said to be based on purchases made in London prior to Penn’s departure in 1682, shows all three of these names, outlined in red in the map reproduced below. All three are located on watercourses. Richard Wall is shown on a branch of Francford Creek, Richard Worrell, on Dublin Creek—giving its name to the first iteration of the local monthly meeting-- and John Hart on Potquessing (now Poquessing) Creek. Two of the three creeks will change their names: Francford to Tacony (or Tookany) Creek, and Dublin to Pennypack Creek. 25

Fig. 8 Map of part of Philadelphia County showing names of original purchasers, c1682.

Dublin Monthly Meeting for Discipline (much later, for Business) rotated around the three English-speaking particular meetings. In 1697 a new and much larger meeting house was built in Abington at the site of its present meeting house, and the Cheltenham Meeting immediately began to use it for their regular meetings for worship rather than Richard Wall’s house, and “Cheltenham” meeting quickly became relabeled as “Abington” meeting. From that point on, too, all Monthly Meetings for Discipline met there. 38 One other change this brought about was a change in the name of the monthly meeting in 1710 from “Dublin MM” to “Abington MM.” In 1728 particular meetings that were part of a Monthly Meeting were authorized to have their own “preparative” meetings for discipline (both men and women, but separately), usually meeting one to two weeks before the Monthly Meeting for Discipline. They would determine what matters of membership, discipline or religious practice they needed to bring to MM for Discipline. Sometimes this consisted only of their required responses to Queries, and sometimes of nothing at all (when there would be no notation in their meeting other than the date in the record). Blank entries, in fact, were very common. That didn’t mean they had nothing to talk about, just nothing to bring to MM. Thus after 1728, Abington Monthly Meeting consisted of the four preparative meetings: Abington Preparative Meeting (previously Cheltenham Meeting) Germantown Preparative Meeting Oxford Preparative Meeting (would become in 1816 Frankford PM) Byberry Preparative Meeting (would be moved in 1782 to the care of Horsham MM) To complete these nomenclatural and administrative changes, in 1816 GPM was shifted from being under the care of Abington Monthly Meeting (in Abington Quarterly Meeting) to the newly-created Frankford Monthly Meeting (in Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting). 38 Except once, in the summer of 1706, more or less in honor of the new Meeting-house in Germantown, Meeting for Discipline was held there. 26

1683…………..1687………..1710….1728……..1816…………..1906 Type of Meeting: G particular Meeting GPM GMM Under the care of: Dublin MM Abington MM Frankford MM Itself

From the outset, the most common membership was the “birthright” membership39. This was refined in 1712 to requiring that both parents must be members. Otherwise one had to request membership through a process still evident today. As one moved from one meeting to another, individual or family memberships were transferred by certificates issued by the meeting which held the membership.

DID PASTORIUS WRITE THE ANTISLAVERY PETITION?

Samuel Pennypacker certainly believes so, saying that the handwriting is like that of Pastorius, and that he was the only man at that time in Germantown who had the skills and the training to do so (especially in English). Some others are not so sure, saying that Pastorius’ command of English was better than that seen in the proclamation. One possibility is that it was written, perhaps by one of the op den Graeffs (or even by all the three other signers, in committee), in Dutch and then translated, without undo editing, into English by Pastorius. See for yourself: compare the Petition (building a case against Slavery) to his account of the Sprogel land affair (building a case against Sprogel and Lloyd).

THE ANTISLAVERY PETITION OF 1688 This is to ye [Dublin] Monthly Meeting held at Rigert [Richard] Warrels. These are the reasons why we are against the traffic of men’s bodies, as followeth:

Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? viz. to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life? How fearful & fainthearted are many on sea when they see a strange vessel being afraid it should be a Turck, and they should be taken and sold for Slaves in Turkey. Now what is this better done as Turcks doe? Yea, rather is it worse for them, which say they are

39 Birthright memberships were discontinued in PYM in the 1970s. 27

Christians for we hear, that ye most part of such Negers are brought hither against their will & consent, and that many of them are stolen.

Now tho' they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men, like as we will be done our selves: making no difference of what generation, descent, or color they are. And those who steal or rob men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of Conscience, which is right & reasonable, here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except of evildoers, which is another case. But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for Conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed which are of a black color.

And we, who know that men must not commit adultery, some do commit adultery in others, separating wives from their husbands and giving them to others, and some sell the children of those poor Creatures to other men.

Ah! do consider well these things, you who do it, if you would be done at this manner? And if it is done according Christianity? You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing. This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear of, that ye Quakers do here handle men like they handle their cattle; and for that reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither. And who shall maintain this your cause or plead for it! Truely we cannot do so except you shall inform us better hereof, viz. that Christians have liberty to practice these things.

Pray! What thing in the world can be done worse towards us then, if men should rob or steal us away & sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating husband from their wife & children. Being now this is not done in that manner we would be done in, therefore we contradict & are against this traffic of men’s bodies.

And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must likewise avoid purchasing such things as are stolen, but rather help to stop this robbing and stealing if possible, and such men ought to be delivered out of ye hands of ye robbers and set free as well as in Europe. Then will Pennsylvania have a good report; instead it hath now a bad one for this sake in other countries. Especially whereas ye Europeans are desirous to know in what manner ye Quakers do rule in their Province & most of them do look upon us with an envious eye. But if this is done well, what shall we say, is done evil?

If once these slaves (which they say are so wicked and stubborn men) should join themselves [together], fight for their freedom and handle their masters & mistresses, as they did handle them before; will these masters & mistresses take the sword in hand & war against these poor slaves, like we are able to believe, some will not refuse to do? Or have these Negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves? Now consider well this thing, if it is good or bad? And in case you find it to be good to handle these blacks in that manner, we desire & require you hereby lovingly that you may inform us herein, which at this time never was done, 28 viz. that Christians have liberty to do so, to the end we shall be satisfied in this point, & satisfy likewise our good friends & acquaintances in our native country, to whose it is a terror or fearful thing that men should be handled so in Pennsylvania . This is from our meeting at Germantown held ye 18th of the 2nd month 1688 to be delivered to the monthly meeting at Richard Warrels.

gerret hendricks derick op de graeff Francis daniell Pastorius Abraham op den graef.

Additional comments made at the bottom of the document:

At our monthly meeting at Dublin, the 30, 2 mo, 1688, we having inspected the matter above mentioned & considered of it we find it so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here, but do rather commit it to the consideration of the Quarterly meeting the tennor of it being nearly Related to the truth. On behalf of the monthly meeting Jo. Hart

This, above mentioned, was read in our quarterly meeting at Philadelphia, the 4th of the 4th mo. ’88, and was from thence recommended to the Yearly Meeting, and the above said Derick and the other two mentioned therein, to present the same to the above said meeting, it being a thing of too great a weight for this meeting to determine. Signed by ord. the meeting Anthony Morris

Not appended to the document, but found in the minutes of the Yearly Meeting: “At a Yearly Meeting held at Burlington the 5th day of the 7th month, 1688 A Paper being here presented by some German Friends Concerning the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Buying and keeping Negroes, It was adjusted [sic; probably intended ‘adjudged’] not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the case, It having so General a Relation to many other parts, and therefore at present they forbear it.”

In 1713, when he was sick and forced to keep to his bed for a period, Pastorius wrote up his view of the “Sprogel affair” and Sprogel’s suit against the Frankfort Company of 1708. He intended to publish it, but did not. EXEMPLUM SINE EXEMPLO [this is sort of a word-play, typical of Pastorius, and can be read as “example without parallel”]

I, Francis Daniel Pastorius, having formerly (to wit these 28 years past) [since 1685] by Doctor Schutz & other honest men in high Germany, (Purchasers of 25,000 acres of land in this 29

Province of Pennsylvania, and known by the name of the Francfort Company) been made & Constituted their Attorney, and still being concerned as Copartner with them, to clear my Conscience (as touching the administration of their sd estate) before all People to whom the reading hereof may come, as I have always endeavored to keep the same void of offence towards the all seeing Eyes of God, am, if it were, constrained to publish their short relation for as much as the aforesd Francfort Company is at present ejected out of their 25,000 acres of land, summo jure, i.e, summa injuria, by extreme right, extreme wrong. Now Intending Brevity, I shall let my Reader know that the sd Company being all persons of approved Integrity & learning became, at least some of them, personally acquainted with our Worthy Proprietary & Governor, William Penn, and purchased of him at a full rate the abovementioned 25,000 acres, & in the very infancy of this Province disbursed large of money for the transporting Servants Tenants and others; and that I, according to the best of my poor ability, (as many of the primitive Inhabitants & settlers yet surviving Swedes Dutch and English may testify) administered their affairs 17 years and a half. But conscious of my weakness, have often requested them to disburden me of this Load of theirs I took on my Shoulders by their frequent assurance to be behind my heels into this Country as soon as the Ice was broken. Whereupon the heirs of the sd first purchasers did appoint in my room Daniel Falkner, John Kelpius & John Jawert, N B to act JOINTLY and not SEVERALLY. However when the sd John Kelpius had a forecast in what channel things would run he with all speed in a certain Instrument (of George Lowther’s device who was the first Lawyer that unhappily got an hand into the Companies business) declared his Unwillingness to be any further concerned therein, and therefore termed Civiliter Mortuus, Then Daniel Falkner & John Jawert acted in the dual number as the sd Companies Attorneys for some few years. For the sd Jawert being married and settled in Marieland, Falkner turned into such a spendthrift and Ever-drunk-Ever-dry that he made Bonefires of the Companies flax in open street in Germantown, giving a bit of silver money to one Lad for lighting his Tobacco-pipe, and a piece of eight to another for showing him a house in Philadelphia, which in his sober fits he knew as well as his own. Hereupon his Joint-Attorney John Jawert affixed an ADVERTISEMENT at the Meeting house of Germantown aforesd, dated the 9th of November 1705, wherein he forewarned all persons who had any Rent or other Debt to pay unto the sd Company to forbear paying thereof &c. And all was asleep, as Dormice do in winter, till about two years agoe, one John Henry Sprogel arrived in this Province, who being HE, that by the Collusion and treachery of the sd Daniel Falkner, by the wicked assistance of the Projectors to be hereafter spoken of, has through I know not what Fiction of the Law Ejected the sd Company out of their real estate of 25000 acres, I think it not amiss to give some little account of him. His parents I hear are of a good report and are to be pitied for such a Scandal to their Family. This Degenerate and Prodigal Child came for the first time into this Province in anno 1700, and quickly owing more than he was worth, went over to his native land in order to procure some cash of his Father whom he said to be a rich Bishop on that side. In his return he was taken by the French & carried off to Dankerk, when he escaped with an empty Brigantine into Holland, and by the (now repented of) Recommendation of Benjamin Furly & his Bookkeeper, H. L., found so much Credit with John Van der Gaegh, Merchant of Rotterdam & others as to be Intrusted with a deal of goods. After he departed out of harms way in that country, and could not be found when search’d for, in England, he came at last to Philada and there took his oath (as I 30 am credibly informed) that all the said goods were his own directly or indirectly. Some of the Germantown people then visiting this their great Countryman and inquiring for letters were looked upon as Slaves, he being the only Anglified in all the Province in Pennsilvania. Howbeit none of us all (I believe) will ever have such a base and disloyal heart towards our Soveraign [sic] Lady the Queen of Great Britain as to get his Naturalization by the like disingenuous knack as he did, viz.:--to borrow a key & wear another man’s coat as though it were his own &c. But to return to the Francfort Companies Concern, he the aforesd John Henry Sprogel having along with him a Letter of Attorney from the sd Benjamin Furly (afterwards though post fectum revoked) sold 1000 acres of land, part of the sd Furly’s purchase in this Province, unto David Lloyd at a reasonable price so as to have his Irreasonable advise in Law for the most unjust Entry upon the Companies land. For he the sd Sprogel, finding no means to satisfy his Old and Just Debts, was forced to find a new and untrodden way of Clearing his Scores, and to play the Gentleman sprung out of a Grocer’s Shop. Therefore among a Swarm of tedious lies (wherewith I dare not trouble the Reader) he also spread this, that he stroke a bargain for the Companies land with Dr. Gerhard van Mastricht, one of the Copartners, of whom I but newly received an extreme kind Letter to the clean Contrary thereof. Moreover the sd Sprogel to pacify the abovementioned John Jawert, who likewise had a share in the sd Company, proffered unto him 700 Pounds Pennsilvania Silver money for the land, and 100 Pounds besides as a Gratuity to himself &c. But he the sd Jawert being too honest for an Imposture and Bribe of this black stamp, Sprogel was driven to that Extremity (hap what may and let Frost & Fraud have hereafter as foul ends as they will) that he must now obtain the 25000 Acres & Arrears of Quitrents due to the Francfort Company solely & alone of Daniel Falkner, who plunged in needlessly contracted debts over head & ears, could expect no gladder tidings (as he said himself) than the same Proffer made unto him. Here David Lloyd (whom to name again I am almost ashamed) comes in very gingerly to play his Roll [sic] FICTIONEM JURIS AD RE IPSA DETRUDENDOS VEROS POSSESSORES [Fiction of law toward the matter itself of ejecting true possessors], the which nevertheless it seems he was not bold-faced enough to do in his proper Clothes, but one Tho: Macknamara a Lawyer, if it were, started up for the purpose out of Marieland, (for a couple of Periwigs which he himself told me was all the Fee he had of this his brave Client for blushing in this Case) must be Nominally inserted in the Ejectment, lending like once the Cat her Paws to a more Crafty Creature for the drawing of the roasted Chestnuts from off the glowing coals. If any demand how this D-L40 and Macknamara could possibly in so horrid a manner Circumvent the County Court, I suppose the fittest Answer I can Give to this Question is what Judge Grouden declared before our honorable Lieutenant Governor sitting in Council, viz: that at the tail of the Court Daniel Falkner and John Henry Sprogel did appear and the aforenamed d-ll and M. laid the matter before the Court , and none there to object (for this cheating trick was managed so Clandestinely that I and John Jawert were altogether Ignorant thereof and when Tho: Clark the Queen’s Attorney then present in Court did rise, the others suspecting he might say somewhat in Obstruction of their hainous [sic] design was gently pull’d down by the Sleeve and promised forty shillings to be quiet, when he had nothing to offer). Thus they surprised the Court and ob-

40 Here Pennypacker puts in a footnote: “To ensure its not being overlooked, I call attention to this pun upon the names of David Lloyd and the Devil.” 31 et-subreptitie [a legal pun on obreptitie: fraudulently and subreptitie: in a thieving manner] compassed the ejectment [on Jan 15, 1708]. Three days after the breaking up of the afresd Court I heard of this unhandsome Juggle and gave Intelligence thereof to John Jawert, who forthwith came up and putt in his Humble Bequest to our well respected Lieutenant Govrnr and his honble [honorable] Council, we had the sd Tho: Clark assigned to pleade our Cause and so Jawert paid him a Fee of ten Pounds, but to this day the sd Sprogel still stirs his stumps in the Companies lands & Rents without the least Controlment. Since all this there arrived divers Letters from beyond the Sea, deciphering pretty fully abundance of the detestable galleries whereby the sd Sprogel ensnared and trepan’d [sliced off the top of the head] the Simplicity of upright & plain dealing people in Holland, admonishing him not to persist in his Evildoings but to Confess and make reparation to the defrauded, if not fourfold as penitent Zaccheus did, yet so far as his ill gotten griff-graff gains would reach &c &c.[All that follows is a single sentence, c200 words] And further there came also fresh Letters of Attorney from all the Partners of the Francfort Company, Living in Germany, Impowering some very able Men in Philada to redress their so horribly distressed Estate in the Province by one worse than the worst Land Pirate in the world could have done, the which I hope they will undertake and heartily wish, that the LORD (who is called a Father to the Fatherless and a Judge of the Widows, whereof there are at this instant several in the abovesd Company) may prosper their just Proceedings, and all, who reverence Righteousness and Equity countenance them therein, and not be partakers of the Spoil, nor of the Curse entailed thereon with the aforesd John Henry Sprogel, for whom notwithstanding the foreign discovery of his unheard of Villainies I retain that sincere Love as to pray God Almighty to Convict & Convert him of & from his Perverseness, that he may forsake his diabolical lies, pride, bragging & boasting, and not longer continue the Vassal of Satan and heir of Hell, but become a child of Heaven and a follower of Christ, our ever-blessed Savior, who as he is truth itself so likewise meek and lowly in heart, leading out of all cozening Practices into the way of holiness and eternal Felicity.

The last sentence of this work is around two hundred words long, illustrating many jokes about German literary style and their long, long sentences. You can compare it to the first sentence, only about 110 words long. You may note that Pastorius even works a curse on Sprogel into his text. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have had any affect. In 1719, the same year Pastorius died, Sprogel donated fifty acres of his ill-gotten Germantown land for the site of the Lutheran Church, pretty well ensuring entry into Lutheran Heaven at least.

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol 33 1909 No.3 32

Section: Notes and Queries, pg 375-7 Accounts Concerning the Building of the Stone Meetinghouse at Germantown, A.D. 1705— This Meeting House stood in the East corner of the Burying Ground on the Southwest side of Germantown Main Street, about 125 feet Northwest of the present Coulter Street. The following abstracts are made from the “Account,” in the custody of Germantown Preparative Meeting of Friends, written on Rittenhouse Mill paper, in the handwriting of Francis Daniel Pastorius. “Anno 1705 the 20th of 4th month, Friends of Germantown bo’t of Heivert Papen a Lott or 50 acres of land for the sum of Sixty Pounds Curr’t silver money of Pensilvania.”

“Subscription of Friends belonging to Germantown Meeting and paid as followeth,” by Aret Klincken, John Luken, William Strepers, Denis Kunders, Lenert Arets, Peter Shoemaker, Paul Wolff, Thomas Potts, Sen’r, James Delaplaine, Isaac Shoemaker, Jacob Shoemaker, Matthew Milan, William Wilkinsen, Abraham Tunes, Francis Daniel Pastorius, Peter Clever, Johannes Kuder, Dirk Jansen, Wolter Simens, Simon Andrew, John Griffith, Paul Kastner, Andrew Kramer, Elias Burley, Mary Doeden, Anthony Loof, Cunrad Cunders (in all L48. 15s in cash and £70. 5s. 2d in work and materials).

[Similar lists also from Philadelphia MM, “Francfort Meeting,” Abington Meeting (including Reiner Tyson, John Jerrot, George Shoemaker)]

The subscriptions in cash and materials were as follows: £. s. d. Germantown Meeting 119 0 2 Philadelphia “ 127 8 Frankford “ 22 8 Abington “ 21 6 Byberry “ 8 2

Costs were: Conveyancing, etc 3 2 4 Digging of stone and sand 12 18 4 Lime at 8d per bushel 23 13 3 Timber, boards etc at L5 per 1000 ft 49 4 6 Shingles at 50s per 1000 11 9 Carting 22 17 Mason & plastering 86 Carpentry 157 1 Workmen’s “dieting,” drink 9 Nails and other iron work 17 5 1 Glass windows, 63 feet 5 17 5 Iron stove 10 33

Making fences 1

B. W. Beesly